"Shanahan," he said as he set his holster and jacket on the table. "Yeah, my pager was in my car… what can I tell you? I just found the telephone off the hook." He shoved the tails of his shirt into his pants, then reached for the jacket. "Tell me you're bullshitting. It's not even noon!" With the telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder, he pushed his arms through the sleeves. "When was that?… I'm on my way," he said and dropped the receiver back in the cradle.
"Shit!"
"What?"
He glanced at her, then sat on the ladder-back chair and pulled on his socks. "I can't even believe this is happening to me. Not on top of everything else."
"What?"
Joe covered his face with his hands and scratched his forehead as if his skin was way too tight. "Damn," he sighed and dropped his hands. "Carter and Shalcroft changed the meeting time. They were arrested fifteen minutes ago. Dispatch tried to contact me, but couldn't." He stood and shoved his feet into his shoes.
"Oh."
Grabbing his holster, he raced for the door. "Don't talk to anyone until I talk to you again," he said over his shoulder. He yelled a few more obscenities, then ran from her house without even saying good-bye.
Chapter Fifteen
Joe cranked the steering wheel and flipped a U in the middle of Gabrielle's street. The right tire hopped the curb as he tore at the nicotine patch at his waist and chucked it out the window. He shoved his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and dug around in the glove compartment until he found a pack of Marlboros. He lipped a cigarette from the pack and lit it with his Zippo. A cloud of smoke billowed toward the windshield, and he took another long pull. His jaws were clenched so tight his teeth felt as if they would shatter, and he didn't know how he would explain the new dent in the Chevy. The dent that was exactly the size of his foot. He'd love to kick his own ass, if it were humanly possible.
The biggest arrest of his life, and he'd missed it. Missed it because he'd been having sex with his confidential informant. It didn't matter that maybe technically she hadn't been his informant at the moment of penetration; he'd been on duty and dispatch hadn't been able to contact him. There would be questions. He didn't have the answers. None that he wanted to give, anyway. Questions like Where the hell have you been, Shanahan?
And what could he say-"Well, Captain, since the arrest wasn't supposed to go down until three, I thought I had plenty of time to have sex with my informant!" Joe scratched his forehead and took another drag. "And hey, she has the most incredible body, after I made love to her once, I got greedy and had to have sex with her again. And that second time was so phenomenal I thought I needed a precoital thump to restart my heart. And captain, you have not had a shower until you've been soaped up and scrubbed down by Gabrielle Breedlove." And if he admitted that, he'd probably have to turn in his badge and become a security guard.
Another cloud of smoke filled the car as Joe exhaled. There was a chance no one would discover his affair with Gabrielle. He certainly didn't feel the need to broadcast the incident or unburden his conscience. But she might, and then he was screwed. When the case went to trial, he could just imagine Kevin's defense attorney grilling him with questions like Isn't it true, Detective Shanahan, that you've had a sexual relationship with your informant, my client's business partner? And isn't this just a case of jealousy perpetrated against my client?
Maybe Kmart needed someone to watch their stores at night.
It took Joe fifteen minutes and another cigarette before he pulled the Chevy into the police lot. He clenched his hands into fists and shoved them in his pants pockets, controlling his anger. The first person he encountered on his way to the booking room was Captain Luchetti.
"Where the hell have you been?" Luchetti barked, but there wasn't a lot of bite behind his words. The captain looked about ten years younger than he had the day before, and he actually smiled for the first time since the Hillard theft.
"You know where I've been." Joe and the other detective had spent hours last night and early this morning poring over every detail and every move the department planned to make. They'd made contingency plans. Plans they'd obviously used without him. "I was at Ms. Breedlove's warning her of Carter's arrest. Where is he?"
"Both Carter and Shalcroft are wrapping themselves in Miranda. Neither are talking," Luchetti answered as they continued down the hall toward the interrogation rooms. For the past week and a half, the air inside the building had been grim and thick with tension. Now everyone Joe passed, from detective to desk sergeant, wore a great big smile. Everyone was breathing again, but not Joe. Not with his ass so close to the wringer.
"Do you smell flowers?" Luchetti asked.
"I don't smell anything."
The captain shrugged. "Dispatch couldn't get a hold of you."
"Yeah, I guess I didn't have my pager on me." Which was basically true. His pager had been in his pants, and his pants hadn't been on him. "I don't know how that could have happened."
"Me either. I don't know how a detective of nine years could get caught without his communication. When we learned Carter changed the meeting time and you couldn't be reached, we sent a patrol unit over to that shop on Thirteenth. The officer reported that he knocked on both front and back doors, but no one answered."
"I wasn't there."
"We sent someone over to her house. Your police vehicle was parked out front, but no one answered the door."
Holy shit. He hadn't heard anyone knocking, but of course, at certain key moments, he wouldn't have heard a marching band passing two feet from his bare ass. "Must have been when we stepped out to get some breakfast," he improvised. "Ms. Breedlove drove."
Luchetti stopped as they entered the division room. "You told her about Carter, and she felt like breakfast? She felt like driving?"
Time to change tactics. He looked the captain in the face and let go of the anger he'd held in reserve. "Are you busting my balls about this? The Hillard theft is the most important case the Property Crimes Division has ever seen, bar-fucking-none, and I missed being in on the arrest because I was baby-sitting an informant." Letting out some of the rage felt good-damn good. "I worked hard on this and put in a hell of a lot of overtime. I had to put up with Carter's bullshit every day, and I wanted to slap the cuffs on him myself. I deserved to be there, and the fact that I wasn't just pisses me off. So if you're trying to make me feel like shit, you can forget it. You can't make me feel worse."
Luchetti rocked back on his heels. "Okay, Shanahan, I'll let it drop unless it comes up again."
Joe hoped to God it wouldn't. There was no way he could explain about him and Gabrielle. He couldn't even explain it to himself.
"Are you sure you don't smell flowers?" Luchetti asked and sniffed the air. "Smells like my wife's lilac bushes."
"I don't smell a damn thing." He knew it. He knew he smelled like a girl. "Where's Carter?"
"Number three, but he's not talking."
Joe walked to the interrogation room and opened the door. And there sat Kevin, one hand cuffed to the table.
Kevin looked up, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. "When one of the cops told me an undercover detective had been working in Anomaly, I knew it had to be you.
I knew from the first day that you were a loser."
Joe leaned one shoulder into the door frame. "Maybe, but I'm not the loser who was caught with Mr. Hillard's Monet, or the loser who filled his house with stolen antiques. I'm also not the loser facing fifteen to thirty in the state pen. That loser would be you."
Kevin's already pale complexion blanched a bit. "My attorney will get me out of here."
"I don't think so." Joe moved aside to let Chief Walker enter the room. "No lawyer alive is that good."
The chief sat across the table from Kevin with a bulky folder filled with paper, some of which Joe knew had nothing to do with Kevin. It was an old police ploy to make a criminal think he had a thick police file. "Shalcroft is being more cooperative than you," Walker began, which Joe figured was just as likely to be a bald-faced lie as the truth. He also figured once Kevin faced the enormity of the evidence against him, he would flip quicker than a dancing poodle. If nothing else, Kevin Carter was an avid self-preservationist. No doubt he'd eventually give the names of the thief he'd used to steal the painting, and everyone else involved.